My noble Friend the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Baroness Neville-Rolfe) has today made the following statement.

I have set Companies House the following targets for the year 2016/17:

Public Targets

To e-enable 96% by volume of all Companies House transactions

To achieve an 85% take up of our transactions

To maintain an availability of our digital services of 99.9%

To reach a compliance level for the filing of accounts of at least 94.5%

To achieve a 3.5% reduction in average costs per company

To achieve a customer satisfaction score of at least 82%.

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The Chancellor has announced that Sam Woods has been appointed as the next Chief Executive of the Prudential Regulation Authority.

Sam will succeed Andrew Bailey on 1 July 2016, who has been appointed the Chief Executive of the Financial Conduct Authority. He will build on Andrew’s work in delivering a strong, secure and globally competitive regime for all financial services.

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On 2 December 2015 the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Marcus Jones) announced the appointment of Eric Ollerenshaw OBE to lead an independent review into local council tax support schemes.

The review was charged with meeting the requirements set out in the Local Government Finance Act 2012, to look at whether the schemes are efficient, effective, fair and transparent.

The review follows the reform of council tax benefit to give councils the power to design their own schemes according to their local needs. It has looked at how this change has been implemented, what it has meant for local areas, and whether it should be part of the universal credit payments in the future.

The review has now concluded and its final report has been submitted to me. The independent report recognises the successful implementation of LCTS schemes by local government.

I have placed a copy in the House Library.

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